Injelititis: Why businesses fail

Businesses fail, whether they are conglomerates, micro, small and medium enterprises or startups. It has been statistically established that 80 to 90 per cent of startups will fail within their first two years. For startups, the attrition rate may be understandable. But more often than not, the reasons are not too dissimilar for corporate behemoths. Or how does one explain the collapse of multinationals like Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson, and in our local clime, big banks like Oceanic, Intercontinental Bank and several others that bit and continue to bite the dust as a result of flawed corporate governance and executive greed? Suffice it to say that no organization collapses overnight. It follows an unchecked process that over time spiraled into an unstoppable end. When an organization goes bankrupt or collapses, various reasons are adduced for the failure. They usually range from negatively impacting government regulations, dearth of working capital, competition, local or foreign, loss of market equity, manpower gaps, to lack of innovation resulting in stagnation in product development or branding. Unfortunately, as germane as these things may be, they may be more of the consequences of a more grievous underlying factor, a human problem which Northcote Parkinson described as “injelititis”, a contagious situation that is largely responsible for the failure of several businesses. In the same way that people are responsible for the growth of a business, the failure of any business is largely traceable to people. Business failures are largely people failures.

Injelititis, also described as “palsied paralysis” begins in an organization in a subtle way and, left unnoticed or unchecked, gradually festers until it seizes the control of the corporate ship through advancement into its leadership. The disease first manifests through individuals who are infected with gross incompetence and petty jealousy. When their influence begins to percolate through the ranks, the disease simply moves to the next stage. At this second stage, according to Parkinson, “Higher officials are plodding and dull, those less senior are active only in intrigue against each other, and the junior men are frustrated or frivolous. Little is being attempted. Nothing is being achieved.”

• Dump injelititis, get to the top

Left unchecked, the disease, like a cancer, begins to metastasize. By this time, insecure, self-centred and largely ignorant and incompetent people have risen high enough through the ranks to hijack leadership. When such a team has gained ascendancy, mediocrity, greed and territory-carving are enthroned. Excellence, competence, innovation, creativity and a highly motivated workforce become the first casualties of the new operating environment. The message that the top echelon is tacitly sending out is described by Parkinson as “We rather distrust brilliance here. These clever people can be a dreadful nuisance, upsetting established routine and proposing all sorts of schemes that we have never tried.”  Apathy is on steroids and mediocrity takes the driver’s seat. At this point, the organization is, to all intents and purposes, dead!

• Becoming a respectable leader (3)

When an organization is in the throes of injelititis, the effects initially start showing through a lack of cohesion in the workforce; leading to palpable flaws in the operations and processes which in turn begin to affect bottom-line, the usual approach of leadership that either ignores or does not recognize its symptoms is to look for what they think may be the ‘silver bullet” solution that does little or nothing in interrogating the actual trouble. It is not unusual at this point for Management to throw machines or new technology at what is essentially a human attitude problem. Some of these interventions involve heavy capital outlays which only benefit the developers of software and the suppliers of the hardware as well as the attendant expertise deployed who reap a windfall through professional fees and other rolling out expenses like installation and manpower training to adapt to the new technology. These expenses can sometimes be very steep. Unfortunately, more often than not, most of the people in-house who are really the source of the problem ab-initio, don’t have a buy-in into the newly deployed technology. Thus it is only a matter of time before the cycle repeats itself and Management is in search of another silver bullet, oblivious of the fact that technology can never substitute for a negative attitude, a purely human factor!

In actual fact, injelititis in an organization is easier identified and dealt with at its initial stages than trying to cure it when it has festered, especially when it sits pat in the driver’s seat via an infested leadership. Unfortunately, it is often ignored until ‘injelitants’ practically overrun the system.

‘Injelitance’ describes the process of operation of this disease in any organization. Three levels are involved in the manifestation or evolution of injelitance. I will examine the three-stage progression of the disease and how it affects any organization where it is left to fester next week. What are the symptoms of injelititis? Even when you don’t physically see injelitants in a system, you can see their influence and footprints in the conduct of operations. It begins with a cynical, almost fatalistic surrender to an inferiority complex that constantly underrates the establishment especially when compared with what is perceived to be a more successful competitor. It is detected in snide comments like, “We can never do what XYZ is doing. It would be foolish thinking that we could ever measure up to their level. But at least we are surviving and keeping our heads above water”. When they talk about staff who have moved to another establishment, it is not unlikely to hear comments like, “It is good for them that they left. At least they have escaped the rot we are in.” To the injelitant, hiring talent from another establishment is unduly disruptive and the talent thus hired must be the reject of the establishment he was hired from. “The people that others reject are the ones we take in here. What can they really do here? The system will soon spew them out if they try to bring in any crazy ideas. They will soon know that to work here, you have to know the ropes” By ‘the ropes’ of course they mean the culture of mediocrity that injelitants are content on enthroning. Think of a hotel that opened to rave reviews and high customer ratings. Three months later, faucets in the room are broken. Bulbs are burnt but not replaced. The bed looks like it is coming off the edge. The reception of the cable TV has gone bad. Internet services that were part of the Unique Selling Proposition are sporadic and reception abysmally poor. The furniture in the reception is getting torn at the edge. The towels have changed from white to cream-coloured. The attendants who daily clean up see the progressive decline but they don’t care or have accepted it as norm, having complained a few times without any remedy. When a customer complains, he is seen as petulant and obtrusive. After all, other people had stayed in that same room without complaining. So, they tell him to “manage it like that” or give him a spin that the carpenter or plumber would come ‘tomorrow’, by which time he would have checked out!….continued.

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!